


Promise on the Wide Wide Moon

by Team_Two_Cats



Series: Reasons for Fighting (Suikoden II) [1]
Category: Suikoden, Suikoden II
Genre: Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 01:45:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18043109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Team_Two_Cats/pseuds/Team_Two_Cats
Summary: Following the failed "peace conference" in Muse in the aftermath of the defeat of Luca Blight, Riou contemplates the reason he fights.





	Promise on the Wide Wide Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of angsty fluff about Riou, because you get asked why you fight an awful lot and there's never a very good option to pick, imo. This is my third or fourth play through, and the first time I'm allowing myself to actually write fic on what is one of my top fandoms.

Riou rolls over, looks up at the ceiling. Stone. He doesn’t stop his mind from tracing back to that first night in Muse, in the prison. Stone ceiling. Full moon. A whole universe of mistakes between that Riou and Jowy. 

Jowy, married now. 

Jowy, who threatened to kill them all. And yet, who would not have them killed in front of Pilika.

Jowy.

Nanami tosses on the bed next to his, arms searching the sheets. He’s losing her, too, he knows. Has been since that night, in Muse, when it stopped being an adventure and started being a growing pile of corpses. 

Fire. That same wide wide moon overhead, and Luca Blight’s eyes burning. Why did everyone have to ask him why he fought? Were their answers any better than his silences, than the warmth he used to feel with Jowy on one side of him, Nanami on the other, their future a distant land where they could live without the disapproving frowns of everyone around them? 

_ Why do you fight? _

He holds up his hand, sees the subtle shine of the Bright Shield, as lonely as the moon.  _ To protec _ t, he wants to say.  _ To protect... _

Who? Or what? Not these bickering states he’s not even from. Not even, if he’s being honest, all the people inside them. The same ones that turned their back on his father and would have turned their back on him, too. To protect...

Nanami begins snoring.

_ To protect my heart. _

He pulls his hand back down and buries it in the blankets. But the thought remains, lighting his thoughts. His heart, shattered and found again in all the people who have come to him, just as lost and alone as him. All the tired boys, the fearless girls. All the soft smiles and warm warm bodies. Love is not a finite resource, he nearly whispers, nearly shouts. He is seeing Jowy again, his face the last time they met and he introduced himself as a Blight. And all Riou wanted to do was reach out and pull him in, and tell him that whatever he has done, he deserves compassion. The rest they can reconcile with time and peace and love, so much love.

He can see it, the monster the moon revealed inside of Jowy. The man so sure of his own guilt that he would never stop punishing himself, not even if the world had to burn for it. Luca Blight is dead, but that taint has already spread, already twisted enough hearts.

Muse, again. And waiting, waiting for a love with a shadow in his heart.

_ I’m still waiting _ , Riou thinks. He hasn’t left the hill outside Muse, the setting sun. 

He wants to stand and run to the great hall, to demand Viki teleport him. Where? To the largest part of his heart, still held by a dirty blond making terrible decisions. 

_ I’ll protect that, too _ , he thinks. Even if Jowy doesn’t think he deserves it. Even if Jowy tries to bury it so deep the moon can’t find it. He’ll protect it, and when the dawn comes he’ll be there, waiting to put it all back together again.

Quietly he slides from bed, winces at the small pained noise Nanami makes, though she doesn’t wake. He creeps from the room and up the tower stairs. No midnight lovers to interrupt this night. Only that moon, that wide wide moon overhead, looking down.

“It’s a promise,” he says up to it. He holds up his hand at the Bright Shield glimmers. “I will protect my heart, so that whenever you are ready to come back, you’ll still have a home in me. I will never hate you, regardless of how much you hate yourself. I’m waiting, Jowy. I’m still waiting...”

The moon just sits there in the sky, giving no indication at all that it sees or understands or condones his words. But it’s a promise all the same, and Riou can feel a pulse across the waters and the plains and the mountains, to a castle as large but so much colder than this one. A pulse, and a warmth no cold can smother. And that is enough. For now, that is enough.


End file.
